Superior, Arizona

There's a little town in central Arizona I want to introduce you to. It's an old copper mining town that came into existence a hundred and twenty five years ago. It started out as a silver mining town and in the 19-Teens changed over to copper for the next eighty years. Since the early 1990's the mine has been closed and the town has lagged behind.

It's not a big town. It's got a population of nearly four thousand and the majority of the people worked the mine before it closed. It's located sixty miles east of Phoenix and sits under the jutting, majestic peak of Apache Leap. The mountain is a red monolith with bulging pinnacles crowning its summit. It earned its name by General Hooker's men rounding up a hold out band of Apache warriors the Army had destined for an internment camp back east sometime in the 1880's. The Army figured they had them cornered once they'd crowded them onto the steep rocky pitches of the mountain's top. Rather than face the ignominy of incarceration, one by one the warriors leaped to their death from the massive rock.

Superior and the mine and Apache Leap have weathered the past and the present over these many years. You can't have one without the other. They make up the whole. And one wouldn't be the same without the other two.

So now the problem arises: There is a Land Swap before the House and the Senate for a British mining company to come into Superior and re-open the copper mine. It would bring the ailing little town new prosperity and assure the townspeople that their children wouldn't have to move away to make their way in the world. It would insure there was a vibrant livelihood in the town once again. It promises to get the boarded up storefronts on Main Street unboarded and thriving again. In short, it promises to bring Superior back to life after its long hiatus of mine closure and few jobs. But what the Land Swap would do is take away some of the Apache land that was promised by Eisenhower in 1955 to stay in natural lands and award it to the mine for land to be mined on. The method of mining the British company prefers is one called cave blocking, where they would dig down into the bowels of the earth by seven thousand feet to cut out big blocks of ore to bring to the top. The weight of the mountain above it would subsequently fall in on itself when enough of the ore had been removed. Impacting, is how the mine describes it. Imploding the mountain is how the Apaches and some retired miners look at it. There is no guarantee that the Apache Leap mountain would not suffer an impaction. Indeed, if that should happen, the little town of Superior that nestles at the mountain's feet could well be threatened too.

So now the friendly, hard working people are at an impasse. Some are convinced the mine would be the best thing for this ailing community with abject poverty and low paying jobs. Others are just as convinced that the mine could ultimately cause the demise of this sacred Apache land and change the landscape forever. Friends and neighbors are at odds with each other and old resentments are simmering. It's hard to go into any store or public gathering without the question of the copper mine getting trotted out and argued over.So what's the coincidence here? It's that for all of the arguments over whether the mine is a good thing or a bad thing for the town, there is one area that everybody is in agreement upon. And that is their heartfelt hope that they all want what is Best for the town. They all want Superior to survive and want the town to prosper. How that will happen is yet to be decided. But what I'm praying is that folks will recognize that they are all in agreement in wanting their little town to thrive, without changing the fact as to what Superior is.